[TBrum]

I got the gear doors installed this morning with the plywood back strip. I like the integrated Kevlar hinge that Compy lays up for this door - makes for a nice, clean set-up.

Tonight I'll work on the linkage to couple the doors to the gear

[TBrum]

Also got the Hysol drying for the lay-up of the inner gear doors so that I can move this ahead tonight.

The instructions show a pneumatic piston to operate these doors. I've debated long and hard between going with pneumatic gear doors on mains/nose gear or keeping it 100% electric and making these doors servo actuated (pro's and con's with both).

Decided this AM, that I'll make them servo actuated. A bit of extra cost for 3 more servos (2 for mains + 1 for nose gear doors, but I plan to use the 18MZ sequencing system in the Tx for this plane to coordinate the gear doors and retracts to keep it to just an Rx and batteries - no additional modules.

[smchale]

Nice work Trev! I'm convinced you take 6 months with these builds and don't tell anyone then when done you post all the steps over 7-10 days to make us all look like slow pokes!!

I've always liked the Tucano. Saw the Brazilian team years ago at the abbotsford airshow (when they flew the red/white scheme) and was mesmerized by them. Very cool team and perfomance!

[TBrum]

LOL!! In all fairness, the CompARFs go together pretty well. Wait until I get into the Y/A F18 builds - then things will really slow down

Ya - pretty excited about this one. A turboprop has always been on my bucketlist!!!

I've also got Voy from All-Scale making me up a cockpit for this with twin pilots I'm told it's almost done and should really spruce this project up

[Pauld]

Originally Posted by smchale

Nice work Trev! I'm convinced you take 6 months with these builds and don't tell anyone then when done you post all the steps over 7-10 days to make us all look like slow pokes!!

I've always liked the Tucano. Saw the Brazilian team years ago at the abbotsford airshow (when they flew the red/white scheme) and was mesmerized by them. Very cool team and perfomance!

I was at that show as well. At first I was thinking, propellers? That sounds boring. Boy was I wrong, those guys were phenomenal. Only thing I have personally seen that could rival the snowbirds. There's so much character in the Snowbirds show combined with the Tutor jets, I don't know what they're gonna do or be like once they do finally retire the a Tutors.

PaulD

[Pauld]

Originally Posted by TBrum

LOL!! In all fairness, the CompARFs go together pretty well. Wait until I get into the Y/A F18 builds - then things will really slow down

Ya - pretty excited about this one. A turboprop has always been on my bucketlist!!!

I've also got Voy from All-Scale making me up a cockpit for this with twin pilots I'm told it's almost done and should really spruce this project up

I'm really looking forward to seeing pics of your cockpit. Would love to put one in my Tucano but may have to wait....

PaulD

[TBrum]

Originally Posted by Pauld

I'm really looking forward to seeing pics of your cockpit. Would love to put one in my Tucano but may have to wait....

PaulD

Absolutely!! I tried to find the pictures he sent me today, but filed them somewhere and can't locate them now, LOL. Pretty sharp looking!!

Voy did one for another guy with a Tucano - full animatronics pilots, working HUD, all functioning screens, etc! Insane! All for the low, low price of $3500.00, LOL

I paired mine back considerably

[TBrum]

Tonight's big project was to hinge the inner doors and see if I could get them operational with some servos.

I had terrible luck with the JR9411 servos... the gear slop in those were enough to make the door operation very jittery. So I ended up using a pair of Savox1268 servos. They are 347oz-in so a bit overkill (), but they work really nice. Even slowed down, the resolution and lack of gear slop is noticeably better than those 9411's.

Tomorrow I'll make up the linkage for the outer gear doors, but just happy the inners are finished

I still have to make up a more rigid servo mount also.

+ YouTube Video

[TBrum]

This morning's project was to get the aileron servos installed with linkages and servo leads. A few days ago I Hysol'd the wooden mount onto the backplate, so pretty simple set-up from there.

The instructions call for 1" arms. I went with 1 1/4" and really happy with the aileron travel

Again - kudos to CompARF - great hardware spec!!!

[TBrum]

Last step with the wings was to bend up some links from 2mm rod that tie the outer gear doors to the C50 struts. Took a couple hours to get the geometry and angles correct for smooth/tight operation, but very happy with the end result.

Not shown - I filleted the brass tube to the door with a bit of Hysol and will touch this up with some black paint later on.

All that's left is to route the 5 servo leads out the root of the wing (gear, brake, gear door servo, aileron, flap) and I plan to use a double and triple ThunderBoltRc multi-connector for each wing!!